


Mandy Brocklehurst-The Only Eagle To Shed Their Skin

by CC_Bean



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-05 04:42:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6689626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CC_Bean/pseuds/CC_Bean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone wanted to talk to her, study with her, bounce ideas off of her. Her housemates knew that the best way to climb to the top was to work with someone who was already there, and Mandy lived at the top.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mandy Brocklehurst-The Only Eagle To Shed Their Skin

_I haven't a clue what I'm doing, I haven't a clue in my head. I haven't a clue what I'm doing, are words that she's never said._

 

**Mandy Brocklehurst was the smartest person in her house.** From year one to year eight she was on top, which says something in a house that prides itself on having the smartest students in the school. Nobody could beat her, and you better believe they tried, but she was just too smart, too dedicated, too competitive for her own good. She stayed up that extra hour looking over her notes even when the most studious of her housemates clambered up to bed because the sun was coming up. She asked the extra questions after class, to the point where some professors would try to quickly shuffle out the door before she could catch them. She closed out the library almost every night before Madame Pince would finally shoo her out as Mandys pleas to stay fell upon deaf ears. She went the extra mile every time, she was the perfect example of a Ravenclaw student. Her achievements were the pride and joy of her house.

 

**But she wanted to be in Slytherin.** With her father being a muggle, her mother had been the only one of her parents to attend Hogwarts, and Lucille Brocklehurst (nee Tolbert) had been a slytherin through and through. Even since she was a little girl Mandy dreamed of finally having the sorting hat be placed on her head and call out the name of the house she’d been obsessed with her entire life. _Slytherin_ . But that’s not what happened. Instead,her moment in the Great Hall was ruined as the sorting hat nearly covered her eyes before yelling out a word- the _wrong_ word. Ravenclaw. What the heck is a Ravenclaw? Maybe she was being a bit dramatic because of course she knew what a Ravenclaw was, it just wasn’t her. At least she didn’t think it was. Unfortunately the sorting hat didn’t agree, and after Mandy sat frozen on the stool in shock for long enough for the polite applause to die down, Professor McGonagall gently shuffled her off towards her new family- the Ravenclaws.

 

**Mandy Brocklehurst is popular.** If there was one thing she learned very quickly it’s that popularity is measured differently in Ravenclaw. Her housemates didn’t care if you were outgoing like in Gryffindor, or funny like in Hufflepuff, or sharp tongued like in Slytherin. In Ravenclaw, popularity is measured by what you _know_ . That’s not to say that the academically average or below average students (and yes, there are below average students in Ravenclaw) won’t make any friends. That couldn’t be further from the truth as Mandy found that Ravenclaws can be quite “clique-y”, but if you have high marks the people come flocking. Everyone wanted to talk to her, study with her, bounce ideas off of her. Her housemates knew the best way to climb to the top was to work with someone who was already there, and Mandy _lived_ at the top.

 

**Mandy Brocklehurst has never been in a relationship** . It’s not that no one has been interested. It’s not even that she’d never been interested, it’s just that Mandy has always been interested in something else _more_ . Usually that something else was her schoolwork but it was other things too. Things that just kept getting in the way. Like in third year when Terry had asked her out on a date to Hogsmeade, but Mandy was _this_ close to finally getting ahead of Hermione Granger and becoming the head of their year. Then there was fifth year with Anthony where tutoring him in transfiguration almost turned into something more but in the end she decided she just didn’t have time for a relationship. It ended up being for the best since a year later she found him snogging some boy down by the lake. People _liked_ her, and she had had more than one crush in her lifetime, but nothing had ever stuck. She decided not to worry about it, after all she was constantly swamped with things to do. The point is that maintaining a healthy relationship was _work_ , and Mandy had plenty enough of that already.

 

**Mandy Brocklehurst does** **_not_ ** **like quidditch.** Sports of any kind were never really her thing (despite her fathers attempts to get her into football), but she could always _understand_ sports. Quidditch though? Not so much. When she first got to Hogwarts after spending her entire life in the muggle world, she didn’t feel completely out of place from the years of stories told by her mother. But her mothers stories had never involved quidditch, so when an excited young Ravenclaw named Michael explained that the wizarding worlds famous sport involved people riding around on brooms hitting some balls, Mandy thought he was joking. Ten seconds later when no one else was laughing she realized he was completely serious. What made it better was that her newfound group of friends were quidditch _obsessed_. By her third year, Michael, Terry, Tony, and Cho all played so Lisa made sure to drag her away from her books so they could camp out in the stands. It’s not that she didn’t like supporting her friends, she did, but she didn’t think it was acceptable when a tornado could be forming in the background and everyone keeps playing like nothing’s happening. Not to mention the fact that flying at high speeds, sometimes holding on with one hand and knocking into each other didn’t seem safe either. While everyone around her was cheering wildly or yelling insults at the other team, Mandy was silently praying that one of her friends didn't crash into someone, fall to the ground and crack their head open. I guess you could say she had very different experiences when it came to the sport and it was one thing she didn’t miss. Of course then Cho went pro and once again Mandy found herself in the stands, in the rain, swearing that her friends were going to make her go gray in her twenties.

 

**Mandy Brocklehurst lives with her dad.** Her parents filed for divorce when she was 11, five months into her schooling at Hogwarts. They’ve never said it out loud but Mandy knows that once she left they didn’t have a daily reminder of the only reason they were still together in the first place. It was for the best really, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. Her mother stayed in the muggle world to stay close to her but after taking a job at the ministry and having to travel to the wizarding world everyday it was decided that Mandy would be better off staying with her dad. At the time Mandy was devastated, but the older she got the happier she was with her parents decision. Her mother may have been _physically_ close but that was about it, and it had been that way since long before her parents got divorced. A few years later, Mandys mom ended up just moving to the wizarding world anyway. She tries to look at the bright side of things, or rather, make a bad situation benefit her in the end. She has two places to stay, two separate wardrobes. She went through a major event while she was young and still trying to fit into a world that would only partially accept her. She promised herself that anything else that was thrown against her, she would be able to handle it. Somehow, against all odds she’d _find a way_. And ever since, she has.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little something I wrote about Mandy for my blog before I took her out of it. Figured I could still post it here though. Enjoy!


End file.
